Richard working on a plaster maquette in the Williston, Vermont studio, 2019
Sketching Passage, 1983
16mm film still
Passage the day after installation at the Donald M. Kendall Sculpture Gardens at PepsiCo. Purchase, New York, 1986
16mm film still
The Making of a Modern Sculptor
Richard Erdman (b. 1952, Princeton, New Jersey) is an American sculptor whose practice engages the enduring vitality of marble and bronze. His work is distinguished by a lyrical interplay of curves and contrasts, by a dialogue between geologic and human timescales, and by a gesture toward the transcendent power of natural phenomena.
Educated at the University of Vermont—where he later received an Honorary Doctorate of Letters (2016)—Erdman has maintained studios in Williston, Vermont, and Carrara, Italy, for over four decades.
Erdman’s breakthrough commission, Passage (1983), a monumental travertine sculpture carved from a single 350-ton block, was installed at the Donald M. Kendall Sculpture Gardens at PepsiCo, New York, where it holds company with works by Alexander Calder, Alberto Giacometti, Joan Miró, Henry Moore, and Louise Nevelson. His work is now represented in public and private collections worldwide—including the United Nations, the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston, Princeton University, the Rockefeller Collection, and the Tel Aviv Museum of Art—and has been featured in more than 160 exhibitions internationally.
Recent large-scale commissions include Arete (2018) in Taipei and Seri Tai (2019) in Taichung, Taiwan, created in collaboration with Richard Meier & Partners and Citterio-Viel. In 2022, Belladonna, his most ambitious marble sculpture since Passage, was installed in Reno, Nevada.